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“So you know how old I am, huh? Weird. Most people can't stop talking about how young I look.”
—Nowi to Gregor in a Support Conversation

Nowi is a playable character in Fire Emblem Awakening. Nowi is a Manakete of an unknown origin or tribe who is over 1,000 years old in human years. Nowi appears and acts like a young girl despite her age in human years. She is the mother of Nah and can be the potential mother of Morgan.

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Born on another continent "across the ocean and way to the left," Nowi had been kidnapped right after she was born, and was separated from her parents. It is unknown what happened during the majority of her life, but at one point, she once met and befriended a wise, old Manakete that taught her several things.

Prior to the events of Awakening, she had been captured and sold as a slave from an auction block to some very despicable men, who made her transform for their entertainment, making her perform tricks. She was eventually targeted by the Grimleal, who sought to offer her as a sacrifice for Grima. However, she was saved by Gregor, who turned against his employers, though Nowi misinterpreted his attempts to help her and believed he was trying to kill her.

As she ran from him and her captors through the Border Sands, she and Gregor were found by Chrom and the Shepherds, who were marching to Plegia to rescue the captured Exalt Emmeryn. Upon seeing her in battle for the first time, the Avatar and Chrom are surprised when she shifts into her Manakete form. After dealing with the Grimleal and protecting them, Nowi and Gregor decide to join Chrom's army.

After the war, if Nowi is not married, she will try to live away from humans, but longed for their company so she embarked on a journey to find her old comrades. If she is married, people often whisper that her husband continued to age while she remained youthful.

Nowi, due to her age as a Manakete, mostly acts like a child, but it is often done to cheer others up. She loves playing outside and is always looking for a playmate, though she explains to Nah that her constant playing around also serves as her training regimen. Upon joining the army, Nowi immediately understands her cheerful impact on the army and acts accordingly to keep the army's morale up. Despite this however, Nowi is well aware of her Manakete status and, like Tiki, is afraid of being alone, knowing that one day, her human friends will die while she continues to live on for many more millennia. Nevertheless, Nowi continues to live everyday, enjoying the time she has with everyone in the army.

Nowi has moments showing her maturity, especially with her children to whom she uses mature language and shows such emotion making sure to care for them and raise them the only way she knows how. This is particularly evidenced in her supports with Nah, where she is concerned with Nah's usage of her dragonstone to train, as it is too powerful and may negatively affect younger manaketes. In the following conversations, Nowi shows how much information she picks up while seemingly playing nonchalantly as well as her ability to heed to her child's wishes and incorporate them into her guidance, earning Nah's respect naturally and making her change her initial thoughts about Nowi. Nowi is also shown to be very acute to the emotions of others, such as the instance where she notices Nah's pent up sadness upon a glance and lets her cry in her arms. As such instances reveal, Nowi is able to lead and bond with her child as a parent more naturally than many other casts of Fire Emblem Awakening, perhaps due to her hobby of playing with other children or due to her true age, which puts her above a millennium in age to her child as opposed to a few years' difference that other have.

In her DLC conversation with Tiki, Nowi is able to cheer Tiki up by changing Tiki's perspective of the world; Tiki deems her thoughts 'pure,' but in Nowi's other support conversations, it is revealed that Nowi has also had her share of pain and loss and has been struggling to come to terms with them for a long time, which in turn hints that the perspective Nowi offered was a product of long and deep thought. As Tiki is made to sleep for the majority of her time to seal her immense power as a dragon scion, it is possible that Nowi is the more experienced with the world.

She apparently shows no aversion to snakes or eating one—although cooked—and learns new things quickly in her support with the Avatar. Her hobbies include talking to members of the Shepherds, hunting, sewing, as well as general frolicker.

In Summer Scramble, Nowi reveals that she, like Sully, cannot swim in their conversation. She wakes up later than anyone else in the army. Her birthday is September 21.

Nowi is the first Manakete recruited in the game and is fairly strong. However, players will need to use her sparingly until reaching Chapter 12 when Dragonstones can be bought unless SpotPass Tiki is available to sell Dragonstone+. Once the issue of weapon usage is sorted, Nowi becomes an incredible unit, having a slightly better strength and defense growth rate over Tiki, but losing out on some resistance and luck growths. However, Nowi will gain HP every level up much like Tiki, leaving her defenses to be a little less dangerous stat. Once she learns Wyrmsbane, Nowi becomes an effective anti-Wyvern Rider and Wyvern Lord unit. As one of the three guaranteed playable manaketes in the game, Nowi should remain a Manakete given that the Dragonstone bonuses raises all of her stats on top of any Pair Up Bonuses, but only after grabbing a few useful skills from her reclasses.

Nowi's two additional class sets are Mage and Wyvern Rider lines. Keep in mind, when Nowi reclasses, she will retain her Dragon weakness even if that class has no unit weakness associated with it. As a Mage and Sage, Nowi's growth rates are near identical to Ricken's and has better defensive growth rates than him. Miriel is much faster, skilled, and stronger magically, but has lower defensive stat growths than Nowi. Nowi performs surprisingly well as a Sage, although her offensive properties are slightly lacking compared to Ricken and Miriel. Nowi makes a great Dark Knight from her high strength and magic growth rates and modestly balanced overall growth rates. Focus raises her critical hit rate when she is isolated from other allied units and Lifetaker, her only health regenerative skill, regenerates half of her max health when she defeats an enemy. Tomefaire raises her magic by 5 but this is only limited to her staying in these magic classes. Slow Burn can be considered, but by the time the skill has a noticeable effect on Nowi, the map most likely will be cleared unless on a higher difficulty or maps with high turn counts like Chapter 20, Paralogue 23, and the Final Chapter.

As a Wyvern Rider, Wyvern Lord, or Griffon Rider, Nowi has better strength and resistance growths over Cherche, but slightly less in speed and skill. However due to her low resistance, Nowi will have to worry about Wind magic more than ever and should be cautious around archers despite her high defense growths. Swordbreaker is a good skill to apply to Nowi in her Manakete class to deal with Wyrmslayers and Quick Burn makes Nowi a powerhouse in initial turns. Lancebreaker, Deliverer and Tantivy are also useful skills to consider using in her Manakete class. Nowi will need to be especially careful in the Griffon Rider class as she will have Beast, Flying, and Dragon weaknesses.

As one of the two Blue Dragons alongside Corrin (F) upon release, Nowi emerges as the offensive one of the two: she possesses solid stats all-around, which makes her a very potent unit. Her offensive potential lies in her default weapon Lightning Breath, which has a built-in Distant Counter and making it very easy to counter from any range. Combining this ability with her solid DEF and HP makes her an excellent defensive unit, capable of defeating even the most powerful Red units, as they typically possess low RES. Lightning Breath's potential can be further enhanced when refined, as it amplifies Nowi's stats and can do adaptive damage to a ranged user's DEF and RES, depending on which one is lower. Overall, Nowi's abilities make her a fearsome unit that is capable of fulfilling multiple roles in battle

For all of Nowi's strengths, she cannot deal much damage against Green units with high DEF, which makes units such as Hector, Fallen Robin, and Raven very hard counters. In addition, Nowi is weak to dragon-effective weapons; while she can resist some hits from Falchion, Naga will deal high damage against her. Finally, Nowi's base skills are rather lackluster, and requires very high investment to be an effective unit.

Eternal Witch

Manakete who travels with Chrom's group. She may be over a thousand years old, but she still gets candy. Appears in Fire Emblem Awakening.

As Ylisse's new knight captain, Frederick took charge of keeping the peace and training new recruits. His wife, Nowi, frequently came to the training yard to lend a hand or instill terror in a new charge.

Virion returned home to Rosanne, where he was labeled a traitor and a coward, or else ignored entirely. Thankfully, his wife Nowi's flair for drama was entertaining enough to keep the mob's pitchforks at bay.

Vaike returned to the streets that raised him and was welcomed as a hero and brother to all. Still, the children were even fonder of his wife, Nowi, who played with them every day and never seemed to age.

Lon'qu returned to Regna Ferox and served as Basilio's right-hand man. His wife, Nowi, disliked the cold Feroxi winters and used her gift for theatrics to secure everything from fur coats to long tropical holidays.

Nowi came in 10th for females in the Fire Emblem Heroes Choose Your Legends popularity poll. She had 10,571 total votes.

Despite Nah's appearance being similar in terms of age, among casts of Awakening, Nowi has among the largest age gap from one's children, placing her and Nah about 1,000 years apart; the only character to surpass this difference is Tiki, who has about a 3,000 year difference from Morgan.

Strangely, Nowi is the only female character that does not trigger Lon'qu's gynophobia.

An odd continuity error can occur at the end of chapter 8 if the player does not engage Nowi in a battle, where at the end of it the characters will remark how Nowi can transform into a dragon despite not actually seeing her do so.

The revealation that she's from another continent in the west potentially means that there are other continents in this Fire Emblem world.

In her supports with Stahl, she finds an injured bird and names it Janaff.

Nowi has a unique victory pose as a Mage and Bride that depicts her briefly cheering with a wide smile.

Nowi's Dragon tribe is unknown, and never brought up. Some speculate she is a Divine Dragon due to using a recolored version of Tiki's dragon form model and her reverence of Naga.

Within the main game, Nowi's breath is referred to as firey, yet in the official manga for Fire Emblem Awakening, it is depicted as cold and slushy like ice.

In the original Japanese script, Nowi's breath is referred to as simply 'breath' with no implication of it being fiery. Furthermore, in her Japanese support conversation with Donnel, Nowi made an offhand comment that she had never breathed fire before (and was going to try it for the first time on the chicken/pheasant she caught with Donnel's stone).

However, Nowi is quite often ready to start fires with her breath across several other support conversations as well, as evidenced in Robin's support where she offers to start a cooking fire with her breath. The variety of breathes she is depicted using may be a reference to Tiki where she could become any type of dragon and use any type of breath in FE 1&3 with the right dragonstones.

The artwork of Nowi and Tiki stargazing is a reference to a conversation they can have in the Harvest Scramble DLC.

In her EXP boost Event Tile, she mentions she met a dragon friend by the name of "Banter" and "Banta", noting that she cannot remember his name exactly. This may be a reference to Bantu, the Manakete who watched over Tiki for many years. In her conversation with Sully in Summer Scramble hints at her knowing Bantu as well, with him apparently telling her of a Manakete that lives under the sea and causes storms.

Nowi uses a different Bride battle sprite from other characters which are instead modified versions of the Tactician's DLC placeholder Lance, Bow, and Staff animations.

While her official artwork depicts her with violet gloves, her confession CG in Awakening depicts her with white ones.

(†) indicates a Hero that is obtained via Grand Hero Battles (‡) indicates a Hero that is obtained via Tempest Trials (*) indicates a Hero that is currently only available as a Special Hero (¥) indicates a Hero that is only available in Legendary Hero Summoning Focuses